 Apples
Courbet |
Still Life Painting • Part Six
In these days of more innocent diet, I have to say that my favourite still-life paintings tend to be the ones depicting fruit. Courbet's still life, 'Apples,' in the National Gallery has been a favourite of mine for many years. Although I did a number of variations of this theme, I still enjoy particularly my “Basket of Fruit<” from one of my earlier bursts of still-life painting, in New York in the early 80’s.
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 Watermelon
Peale |  Watermelons and Green Figs
Christian |
For sheer beauty, Water Melons are hard to beat. Or simply for the sake of Beauty, as Caravaggio and Melendez had before me, I used to find figs amongst the most inspiring of foods for still-life painting. Of course, it is impossible from time to time to resist simply throwing everything onto the table and painting it! In periods of painting still-life, things tend to mount up, cheeses, breads and just anything you might imagine. I remember once in my New York studio finding all these “leftovers” at the end of a few days of wild inspiration, and I did just that. I simply put them onto the table higgeldy -piggeldy, just as they are seen here, and painted them all in the one day of life I felt they still had left in them.
 After the Banquet
Christian
Zurbaran (1598 - 1664) was a curious artist. In fact he was one of those painters who definitely fits into the category I mentioned earlier of painters who suddenly take off from their usual preoccupation to paint a still-life, completely out of the blue. I used to find Zurbaran’s paintings somewhat depressing, as he seemed to paint nothing but monks at prayer, and always so much in the dark that one only caught glimpses of them anyway. Large dark rather spooky figures I found them. And so I was particularly surprised when I discovered his still-life, which I believe has actually become one of those flukes that has become rather well known and suddenly everyone loves it. Quite rightly in my opinion, as it, and its companion piece, a detail of just the dish and the rose to the right of this composition, I always found very beautiful. So much so that one day I painted my “Zurbaran Revisited,” in which I mixed his still-life and added a few of my own favourite still-life subjects. I gave the work a very dramatic sky in the background to recall the rather heavy side of Zurbaran’s other works, although in his own he painted just a plain dark background.
 Still Life
Zurbaran |  Zurbaran Revisited
Christian |
 The Picnic Basket
Christian |
I love still-lifes that appear like incidental music in a film, just as a detail, not actually shouting out at you to be aware of it, but so beautiful when you are. In Manet’s “Dejeuner Sur l’Herbe” for example I always loved the casual way he just threw the remains of a picnic into his composition. My style is usually a little more highly finished than Manet’s, but I once did the same, and put a little picnic in the corner of a version I am still working on of Leda and the Swan.
When one talks about having been influenced by another artist, it means that his work was seen and appreciated, and then one did something with that inspiration in mind. That did indeed happen in my case, to the point where I saw, for example, Zurbaran’s still-life and years later thought I would enjoy making a variation of it. That is influence, Zurbaran’s on me, my work. But what also happens very often is that an artist paints something purely from his own experience and inspiration, and then years later discovers a work or even works that have a similarity, even though he had never been aware of them when painting his own work. Such was the case with my “Lillies in a Ming Vase.” Literally two years after painting that I came across this painting by Ludger (1522 - 1584) 1Flowers in a Vase' and felt that the painter and I must have shared a very similar sense of excitement indeed. That is one of the aspects of art that is magical, that different people in different times and even distances far apart, can share the same joy and inspirations, and wish to share those joys in paint with the world.
I painted this Basket of Clothes in Paris and although I hadn’t - and still haven’t - seen anything quite like it, still it makes me think of the precious details in Chardin’s genre scenes.
When I write on the genre of “The Landscape,” I will talk about the horrors of working out of doors. However, on one of the rare occasions I actually painted a Still-life out of doors, I couldn’t have chosen a more difficult place to do so. Muslims do not believe in figurative art, in any representation of reality, and therefore there was a certain vibration of antipathy surrounding me as I set my easel up in the street and started painting away. One of the most wonderful things about Art though, is that when people who are not used to seeing it in the process of creation do so, they are often intrigued and seduced by the quality of magic that it really has. Such was the case when I painted this 'Moroccan Marketrdquo; and I could feel my audience “melting” towards the fact of my existence, rather than wishing I would just go away. As I finished it, several of the less shy members of the crowd surrounding me (making it quite difficult to see my subject any more) took my hand and shook it vigorously, lovely smiles on their faces. They were pleased with the painting, as indeed was I.
I have mentioned Surrealism in both these articles and as a specific subject. It is so important to me as a means of expression that it will surely crop up in all my other articles also. Part of why it has become so important to me is that I have spent my whole life adhering to a given set of visual rules. Although I have been delighted by it very often, and love some of the images I have created based on those principles, to suddenly find myself, after some forty years, completely without any rules or principles at all is pretty heady stuff, and I relish it.
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Lillies in a Ming Vase
Christian | Flowers in a Vase
Ludger |
 Basket of Clothes
Christian
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 Moroccan Market
Christian
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 Dessert with Wafers
Lubin Baugin
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While on the subject of Surrealism, although my main aim is to introduce my readers to Masters who have created works which have influenced my own work, or simply works that I love so much I want to share them, I would like as I finish this article on Still-life to mention the surrealists working today whose works I find the most exciting and which I greatly admire. I have already mentioned Claude Verlinde, whose work falls somewhere between Bosch and Bruegel, but is even more imaginative with 300 years of added history to benefit from. His imagination and flawless technique make a marvellous combination for creating truly memorable works. The same could be said for Michael Parkes, who is a consummate draughtsman with the most wonderful mildly erotic imagination. And seeming to have taken the baton directly from Magritte, Rafal Olbinski is at the very least as worth “watching“ as the earlier Master who has had such a profound influence on him. Each of these three artists make Art an enjoyable and uplifting experience in the Grand Manner, and in spite of the vastly greater hyperbole received by the more modern, the abstract, and even the nothing-really-to-do-with-art-at-all “works” one is now confronted by. I hope you will enjoy them all, and my own contribution, as much as I do myself. Thus is Art truly served.
To conclude:
During those sixteen years or so of painting still-life, it must be said that some of that time was spent concentrating on Drapery with my Mannequins, but I shall write about that in a separate article. I had already launched into my dreamed of Compositions some ten years ago, when I stopped working on the grand scale for a while to concentrate on the Nude from 1998 to 2003, My next subject, to the present time became the Landscape. I am particularly concentrating on Landscape now, simply because I am living between South India and Yorkshire and finding myself in both - extremely different - places inspired by the scenes around me.
Artists and works I would recommend looking at, in which the detail of a still life is particularly exquisite, and one or two still-lifes that have long been amongst my favourites: the first is the quite miraculously miniature detail of the veggies in the foreground of the tiny painting by Frans van Meiris (1635 - 1681) ...dazzling. And from such a tiny painting in the Wallace Collection to a very large one in London’s National Gallery: by Hans Holbein ( 1497 - 1543.) It is called “The Ambassadors”. What fine portraits they are, what a wonderful and harmonious composition, and how beautifully painted the background wall hanging, with that loveliest shade of green! But in spite of all that, just look at those objects Holbein has placed on low shelves behind his ambassadors, including a spectacular globe and various scientific objects. As a painter myself, I can hardly believe that such rendering of objects is achievable by the human hand. It is one thing to “copy” objects to miniature perfection, but that’s just the technical aspect of a work. More important are the artistic and aesthetic aims, to paint them with an illusion as to their roundness, their three dimensional quality, the feel of them, that is where the genius of a work lies, in a quality that goes beyond mere skill; and Holbein had that gift of genius in great quantity.
The three still-lifes that have always fascinated and delighted me, as they seem to have been painted purely for the sake of creating something beautiful are:
Still-lifes: Lubin Baugin (1611 - 1663) “The 5 Senses” and “Dessert With Wafers”.
Juan Sanchez Cotan (1561 - 1627) “Quince, Cabbage, Melon and Cucumber”.
The two that I feel approach the same inspiration, that of sheer beauty, of form and of colour, that I painted myself is a detail from the door of my Still-life Door-frame.
And a last word, for parents wishing to introduce their children to Art, specifically to Still-life, the work of Arcimboldo (1530 - 1593) is a very good place to start.
Anthony Christian
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 The Five Senses
Lubin Baugin
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 Quince, Cabbage, Melon and Cucumber
Juan Sanchez Cotan
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 Still Life Doorframe (Detail)
Christian
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 Summer
Arcimboldo
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